Westworld, HBO’s upcoming series based on the 1970s sci-fi movie, reportedly asked extras to be prepared to bear it all should they accept the gig.
More than 50 extras received a consent form that informed them that they would be required to take part in “graphic sexual situations.”
“This document serves to inform you that this project will require you to be fully nude and/or witness others fully nude and participate in graphic sexual situations,” began the consent form.
The form continued, “By accepting this Project assignment you may be required to do any of the following: appear fully nude; wear a pubic hair patch; perform genital-to-genital touching; have your genitals painted; simulate oral sex with hand-to-genital touching; contort to form a table-like shape while being fully nude; pose on all fours while others who are fully nude ride on your back; [and] ride on someone’s back while you are both fully nude.”
One of the Westworld extras who received the notice admitted that as working actors struggling to find work, it felt exploitative.
“I was dumbfounded,” one actor told Deadline. “There’s been nudity in TV and film for decades, but I have never seen this kind of waiver before. I would be surprised if principal performers were handed a document like this. It appears kind of coercive. Background people want to work, and they will do most anything they are asked.”
After SAG-AFTRA, the labor union representing more than 160,000 film and TV professionals, became aware of the disclosure and consent form sent out by Central Casting for Westworld, it posted a notice on its website informing actors that the form was “unenforceable.”
When HBO responded to the notice, it blamed Central Casting for the questionable verbiage of the form and that the network has since undertaken to rectify the situation.
“The document that the background actors were given was created by an outside extras casting vendor,” HBO said in a statement. “It was not requested, written or approved by HBO, Warner Bros. Television, or the producers, and contains situations that we do not require of any actor. We are rectifying immediately the discrepancies in this vendor’s document with our actual on-set practices, which provide a professional and comfortable working environment for all performers.”
Westworld is set in an Old West theme park where things get twisted when robots, programmed to interact with and entertain the park’s visitors, turn deadly. The series, starring Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood, James Marsden, Thandie Newton and Ed Harris, will premiere on HBO sometime in 2016.
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